Camouflage militia burst from the van and scampered into the remains of the house to reinforce the kitchen pillbox.
Branoc jumped around the corner of the garage and punched the first of the terrorists with his fist. The vampire tumbled to the side while his other fist struck the second vampire knocking it against the garage and rolling it across another two vampires. He caught their dropped guns while they still floating in the air and he fired into the spinning bodies.
Streaks of blackness converged from the shadows around my sister’s driveway. Blurs of black jumpsuits from the neighbor’s dense shrubbery. My gut knotted up the same as when a pair of similarly dressed vampires attacked Garin and I in my apartment. Their faces blackened with paint and their hair tied up in taut buns by black stretch nets. A mix of black and dirty blond hair their only distinguishing features. Thin young women when they became vampires, how recently or a millennium ago?
I slammed my hand against the car window.
The new team of vampires snatched at the militia members holding my sister’s family and twisted their heads off. The green camouflage outfits broiled with blood as my sister’s family shrieked and became covered in crimson blooms.
The new vampires flipped out black hoods and popped one over my sister’s head. They tumbled the kids into burlap sacks and slung them over their shoulders. My brother-in-law kicked and punched at the vampires as they pulled away his daughter. Woefully outmatched, he still fought them. They could not get a hood over his head. Then one of the vampires walked over and backhanded his cheek snapping his head to the side. His body spun and then landed sprawling and motionless upon the driveway.
“No!” I screamed. I flipped open the car door, the hinges creaking and complaining when they caught the forward energy. I raised the gun in my hand and flipped over the safety. I gripped the gun with both hands as if I’d seen in every police show I’d ever watched and squeezed the trigger. The shot went wide of the jumpsuit vampires and struck a van.
Brett tripped getting the rifle out of the car but righted himself and fired at the jumpsuit vampires. He hit a vampire in the collarbone. My second and third shots both ended up in the trees from the recoil of the first shot and maybe because I worried I might hit my sister or her kids. The jumpsuit vampires snarled and disappeared into the thick hedges toward the spur of woods between a pair of houses down the street.
Terrorists fired toward Brett and I. Bullets struck the car behind us like rocks hitting tin. Lead scoured the dirt at our feet in little puffs of soil. Brett yanked my arm and got us behind the car. He laid his rifle across the top of the trunk using the rear pillar to protect him as he returned fire at the terrorists. I felt the air and Brett’s body shake with each trigger pull, thumping against the car body.
From several properties farther up the road, I heard branches snapping and brush breaking. Three shadows raced out blurring toward us. Brett remained intent on his targets. Thunk thunk thunk pounded out of his rifle behind me as it flipped brass trinkets across the trunk lid that tumbled down the rear fascia bouncing against the ground. I blinked my eyes freezing the image of the rapidly moving shadows. My reflexes took over. Point at what you want dead. I pulled the trigger. I do not know how I held the gun steady. Strength in facing such fear? Something deep in my DNA forged by survival in the last ice age when my ancestors confronted similarly armed saber toothed tigers? I counted.
Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve.
The first shadow faltered. It stumbled out of its vampire stride as one of the bullets struck it hard.
Eleven, ten, nine, eight.
The second shadow twisted in the air from a solid hit. My shots pierced its shoulder and gouged its chest.
Seven, six, five, four.
The first two vampires split to the sides to flank us while the third continued at me. No fear of such a paltry weapon that I fired at her.
Thunk thunk thunk continued behind me. Brett twisted his head to look at what I was doing. “Shit –” He shifted his body to fire at them – but horribly too late.
Three, two.
The hard fist of the third vampire smacked the gun from my hand.
The other two vampires kicked the rifle from Brett’s hands and punched him. The force of their combined hits flipped his body over the car to land somewhere on the pavement and gravel on the other end of the vehicle. I didn’t hear him get up.
“Dieses ist she!” hissed the third vampire. One of them snatched my arms around behind me and wrapped my wrists in iron fingers. Something sounding like a flag in the wind snapped open and a black hood popped over my head. Strings drew tight around my neck. I heard Branoc’s pistols barking amid the other guns. Where was Garin? And was Brett even alive? They shoved me forward. Clutching at my clothes to hurry me along.
A phone buzzed and a hand released me to retrieve it, “Ja. We have her.”
One of the other vampires laughed, “Too easy. The locals are dumm.”
“What?”
“That one, Garin, sees us.”
“So?”
“He’s the one that killed Elsie and Greta.”
One of the jumpsuit vampires hoisted me on her shoulder. I felt the brush of branches as they took me into the damp woods. They ran at their vampire pace and the sounds of gunfire quickly receded. Me as their prisoner and the fates of so many I knew remaining undecided.
The terrorist leaped from behind the car and rushed at Garin. Garin slumped back against the tree. His arm useless but healing. Not in time to pick up his gun. The terrorist grinned as he raised his rifle to cut through Garin’s neck.
Garin flicked the steel sword concealed under his leg and sliced through the terrorist’s shins. The vampire slid off the stumps of his legs and the bones sunk like tent stakes into the warm soil. Bullets from the wounded terrorist charged the air but Garin didn’t stop. He sectioned the arms off stopping the rifle shots and then he struck the neck from his attacker.
A hail of bullets from the terrorists behind cover chased him to his apple tree.
Garin heard terrorist rifles rounding the garage and the bullets did not seek him but the terrorists hiding in the neighbor’s yard. Garin’s arm healed enough that he picked up his gun and shook the dirt and blood from it. Garin’s phone rang. He dug it out of his pocket from habit and grimaced. Caller ID said ‘K Branoc’.
“Get over here when I start this next gun,” Branoc tossed the first empty rifle to the grass and hung up. His pistols hung over the back of his belt. He picked up a pair of terrorist rifles and pointed them around the corner of the garage, the first at the kitchen and the second across the yard at the vampires holding Garin down. The guns spewed a river of metal hitting the vampires hard and pushing them back. A blur and Garin crouched behind Branoc. Branoc raised the rifle tips and spun behind the garage wall.
“Where’s Anna?”
“They took her.”
“Who? The militia or the terrorists?”
“A third group. Girls in black jumpsuits.”
“How are we to find them?”
“I don’t know yet.”
The militia members behind the stainless refrigerator fired at the terrorists they saw in the neighbor’s yard. The terrorists returned fire.
“Let’s take the car to my house,” said Garin.
“As good as any plan.”
They ran to the car. Branoc stopped as he crossed Brett’s body lying in the gravel. The vampire sensed life. He grabbed Brett’s shirt and picked him up as he moved around the car in a crouch. The terrorists now too intent on the militia members.
“Get in the back Garin. You need to repair him.”
Branoc stuffed the body into the seat. Brett’s head flopped around but his neck seemed unbroken.
“I really don’t like this guy.”
“Because Anna accepts his attentions? Get over it.” Branoc got in the driver’s seat and dropped the rifles on the passenger cushion with their barrels in the foot well. “He may be usefu
l later.”
The remaining terrorists moved quickly toward the kitchen. As they neared, the militia hiding behind the kitchen appliances tossed several vampire grenades. The grenades landed in the once living room the terrorists approached through. Some of the terrorists slipped over the ledge of the remains of the large picture window. Some used the heavy oak of an old Victrola wedged holding up the ceiling roof joists amid baffles of dripping insulation and flames.
The pancake-like grenades bounced and sprang up to neck height and exploded with violence and fire. A second set of grenades the militia set lower before throwing so it jumped to crouching height and removed the heads of several more vampires. Pieces of shrapnel dug into the stainless refrigerator and the cabinets. The militia laid flat on the floor. They grabbed their modified crossbows from the protected corner and rushed at the terrorists.
They killed two more vampires. The last remaining vampire terrorist leaned around the Victrola and killed one of the militia. The two militia members still alive dropped to their knees and fired from pistols holstered at their sides. Their rounds sliced through the oak and expanding into wide slugs that knocked the vampire around disorienting him. The militia moved around the Victrola and fired two more shots at the vampire severing its neck. The head dangled as the body fell. The vampire’s hand opened and a traditional grenade rolled from its dead fingers.
The humans couldn’t move fast enough through the fire and smoke and dead bodies. The grenade flashed steel splinters tearing flesh and cracking bones. But the two men remained alive. They crawled and dragged themselves back through the kitchen and to the vans in the driveway. A trail of blood marking their path.
A young woman in a black jumpsuit squatted at the side of the driveway. She put her finger to the surface of a fat drop of blood and raised it to her tongue. “Mmm. Still fresh.” The militia heard her words and frantically sped their wounded crawl toward the vehicles. She came closer and swept them into her arms, plunging her fangs into the first one.
Even with face paint and her hair pulled back, he recognized her, “Claire –”
“Goodbye Bruce.” She knew the pain would go away. Filled with an ecstasy that made slipping away easier. As his blood rushed into her mouth, the delicious tang of hot iron, she flashed on a memory of the vampire that came out of the shadows and drank of her so long ago. Like an ancient broken wolf on the hunt, he had stalked her. Her blue robe fluttering in the dim night before the moon rose free of the horizon. The sounds of the innocuous clicking from a walking stick and the soft swipe of threadbare leather shoes worn by a haggard, decrepit old man approached her on the path. His watery gray-black eyes distracted her as he came close, before his strong fingers twined in her black hair. The excruciating bite that pierced first her wrist and then her throat. Calling out would not help; she came toward her home outside the village but yet still too far for anyone to aid her. The world swooned. But then a second vampire rushed out of the shadows and fought the first. A magnificent creature, old and powerful. But she lay dying beside the dirt path with painful erratic heart beats while her blood continued to bubble from the jagged wound at her throat. Like two wolves fighting over a nearly dead deer, they circled and struck each other in a furious flashing storm. Then the second vampire won her as his prize. He came and she remembered how her weak body did not care that he drank her. But he did not leave her body for the ravens. He revived her. He turned her into the undead before he disappeared into the shadows. She awoke as this mighty vampire with power that flayed any before her path. But he also left her with the need to feed. The hunger. A hunting wolf with fangs that rip and rend.
Claire dropped their bodies next to the truck wheel. The odor of rubber and traces of oil and gasoline filled the air around the machine. With the tall hedges, the neighbors only saw the two bodies’ slump to the pavement. She faded into the shrubs and then the forest.
Sirens from police and fire departments finally peeled through the darkness.
-:- Fifteen -:-
They ran through the forest with the same speed Garin raced with me around the peninsula when we escaped the cowboy vampires. The wind whipped the bag clutching at my throat and battered my ears while my clothes fluttered along my body like skydiving. How far did they take me? Would anyone be able to find me?
They slowed. The splash and wet foam of water touched my body. Then they sped up again. Branches brushed like whips against my body. The crushing grip of the vampire and bouncing on an unforgiving shoulder became too much and I lost sense of anything else to locate myself. The water could be a clue if not so many small tributaries became the wide Rouge River nor the nearly infinite number of small lakes and marshes left over from the glaciers that scoured this part of the globe ten thousand years ago.
They could be taking me in a big circle and to a house near my sister’s. Or to a warehouse across town or any number of remote destinations. No car motors, no noisy freeways, no barking dogs. Only the buffeting wind along the zigzag path they took between trees as they pushed forward.
The cool dampness of the forests continued lashing me with branches that kept my attention. The cutting cold of nightfall already filled the low spots in the forest. We traveled too far and too long.
They didn’t seem intent on killing me and must have other plans.
Fear welled up from the pit of my battered stomach.
They slowed. The vampire carrying me flopped me to the ground.
My feet and hands crunched through dried leaves and pressed into the soft loamy soil. We must still be in the woods. Somewhere. One of them yanked my arm and body to standing.
My head fluttered faint and disoriented. My ears ached. Sweat stuck my hair to my face inside the black bag. Goosebumps from the chill prickled my arms. My knees wobbled and I would have fallen except for a severe pinch of a hand on my elbow holding me upright by my arm.
“Valk.” the voice holding me ordered. The voice could be any number of Eastern European dialects. Not that I had ever been there but I recognized it from the movies. She pushed me forward. I stumbled over loose rocks and the uneven ground littered with both dry and damp leaves. Walking on a creature left for dead to rot in the wilderness. Might I soon be joining it?
I heard other footsteps besides my own. Fanned out in a wave of vampires. None of them stumbling and shuffling with my dazed and blinded stuttering gait. Swift and sure and exact. Sometimes barely a muffle of leaves. Hardly any branches brushed than those that still clawed for me.
Two sets of rapid vampire feet halted near the one holding me. “It’s clear,” they said.
“Goot.” said my captor. She motioned with her other hand hard enough that I sensed her body twist.
The sound of a manually operated garage door sprung from its locks at the command of a squeaky twist on a t-handle. A door before the time of automatic openers.
They guided me toward that trundling door. A gaping maw breathed at me. Deeper cold issued from it than the dropping temperature of the darkening night. The building had been unoccupied and alone for a long time. Winter’s chill still clung to its bones in the middle of the summer in this sheltered wood.
Forgotten.
My shoes touched a strip of unmanaged grass, a step of gravel washed by rain from the eaves, and then cold concrete.
The door trundled back down and latched behind us. The cement floor seemed to suck heat from my body through the soles of my shoes. They guided me forward. Cobwebs brushed my arms and I’m sure the outside of the bag that hung heavy on my head. The creak of soggy iron doors erupted, banging open before me as they led me forward.
My guide stopped, mentioning, “Steps down, bitte.”
I put a foot out and touched only air. I let my foot down and it landed on uneven stone. Old stone with ripples of corroding mortar. I felt sick. They took me down, putting me in the damp and the dark under the ground. Every bit the spirit of an ancient, forgotten crypt.
Cold.
-:- Sixteen -:-
Branoc’s cell phone rang. The display on his phone showed “untraceable”. Normal humans might get “unknown” on their caller ID if a blocked cell phone number attempted reaching them. Vampires had another layer of access controls. Branoc’s phone would actually show the humans’ veiled numbers and start bringing up their personal data on an easily flipped-to page on his display. But not vampires. A shadowy dark and nearly otherworldly communication realm that sometimes even further obscured itself through secrecy. His phone only blinked “untraceable” as the rings continued.
Branoc let his foot off the accelerator. He hit the speaker-phone and answered the call.
“Mr. Branoc?” came a silky smooth woman’s voice.
“Yes.”
“I can hear others in your car so I will be brief.”
Branoc glanced in his rear view mirror. Garin sat quietly alert. Brett leaned against the corner of the seat and trim recovering but not fully awake yet, “Ok.”
“We have your girl for a trade.”
“– Trade for what?”
“We will call you later with the specifics. Make sure you contact Garin Ramsburgh. You will need his help in meeting our demands.”
The phone went silent.
-:- Seventeen -:-
“I’m going to vomit,” I stood on the stairs. I had counted sixteen. Like bullets seeking me at each tread. My body wavered. Still a crushing grip on my elbow and likely the only thing keeping me from fainting. The acid already scoured the back of my throat in little uncontrolled gurgles.
Behind the vampire, guiding me down into the ground, came a different voice, “I wouldn’t advise it. You won’t want to mess in your hat – because you’ll be wearing it a lot.”
The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #2 & #3) Page 11